


No More Worlds To Conquer

by HigherMagic



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jack being Jack, M/M, Marijuana, Murder, Murder Husbands, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 03, Sleep Deprivation, Starvation, Temporary Character Death, Touch-Starved, Vomiting, Will Hallucinates Hannibal, Will Loves Hannibal, will thinks hannibal is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 11:04:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13786179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HigherMagic/pseuds/HigherMagic
Summary: There's a shadow in Will's mind, with a familiar face. After the fall from the cliffs, he has passed the time in solitude and grief, with only this shadow as his companion. Hannibal is dead. Will watched him die. He clings to this truth, no matter all the evidence telling him otherwise.





	No More Worlds To Conquer

**Author's Note:**

> So I listed to "Rx (Medicate" by Theory of a Deadman and got........feels. Highly recommend listening to that song before/while reading.
> 
> This is also my first attempt at writing from Will's mindset and let me tell you it was difficult.

"What is it like to be in love with a serial killer?"

It's anger. It's need. It's watching the world snake eat its own tail. The memory of cliffside shattering bones, water beating away breath like Poseidon himself is rejecting the offering of broken bodies falling into his domain.

Sometimes Will still has trouble breathing. He rises from sleep drenched in sweat, feeling gritty sand under his hands, soaked to the core like he just crawled from the water, and coughs up salt from his lungs. How he still has some to spare, he'll never be able to tell. Maybe he swallowed too much to ever be rid of it, just like he swallowed too much flesh, and blood, to ever really feel clean.

He takes his glasses off, setting them to one side, and rubs at his nose, fingers on one side, thumb on the other, digging into the soft parts between his sockets and lowered lashes. He sniffs, grits his teeth, and sits back, staring at his computer screen. It's on its lowest brightness but still feels piercing, penetrating. The scar on his forehead aches.

He looks down at his hands, blinking and curling his nails when he sees red still on them. It'll never go away, tattooed into his skin in one last permanent mark. He had fallen with Francis Dolarhyde's blood on his hands and Hannibal's jaw in his teeth.

He shouldn't be alive. God knows that fall alone would have been enough to kill a man like him, had his wounds not taken him sooner. He sniffs, rubs his thumb below his nose, and reaches for one of the many pill bottles at the side of his computer. He opens one, pours two Adderall into his palm, and swallows them dry.

"Still self-medicating, I see."

Will smiles, sitting back in his chair, and rolls his head to one side. The figure in the corner of the room is cloaked with shadow. Will doesn't have any lights in this room, relying only on the natural daylight and the glow of his computer. "It's self-defense," he says. "God forbid I get clean enough for you to eat."

"You behave as if I'm still a threat to you."

Will smiles. "You will always be a threat to me."

The figure hums, sitting forward so his elbows are on his knees. His face is still shadowed, blurred. Will has a hard time making him look like anything than how he did, in those final moments. When both of them were bare and bloody.

"You called my final design beautiful," he says.

Will nods, licking his lips. His mouth is dry. "It was."

He turns his head, sighing and blinking up at the ceiling as he waits for the Adderall to kick in. He should have snorted it – it works faster that way, but makes his nose feel itchy and flaking. He worries it will open his appetites to something harder.

If his past bloody years have taught him anything, it's that he's highly susceptible to gateway drugs.

He sits forward and takes a jar from the other side of his computer. He opens it, wrinkling his nose at the sharp scent of the bud inside, and takes out a wad of it, putting it in his grinder and twisting each half to turn it into powder.

Behind him, the shadow hums in disapproval.

"You gave me my life," Will says, defensive and curt. He grabs the dirty bong and loads the bowl with the weed, green and vibrant. "Now I can do with it as I wish."

"And this is what you choose to do," comes the reply, as Will lights a corner of the bowl and presses his mouth to the opening, taking a deep inhale as the water bubbles and the pipe fills with smoke. Will sets the lighter down, keeps breathing in, and lifts the bowl so that it floods into his lungs. He swallows it, holds it in, lets it out in a thick cloud, and does it again. "You've become a degenerate."

"It sells books," Will says, grinning tightly.

He takes another deep lungful of weed smoke, feels it burn and itch his tender lungs, and breathes out again. His teeth feel numb and his eyes go heavy-lidded as it starts to take effect. With the Adderall, he won't sleep for several hours, even as the lethargy sweeps over him. It's the only thing he has found that cures his headaches anymore.

"It's medicinal," Will adds, his voice softer now. "I have a prescription for it."

"You don't have to justify yourself to me," the shadow replies.

Will hums, setting the bong down. "Yes I do."

 

 

"You could have saved him. You could have performed CPR, kept his heart beating until rescue came."

"And deny him his freedom once again? No. I'd rather he died."

Bedelia hums, her eyes raking over Will's ghost-like demeanor. "Would you like something to help you sleep?"

"Yes."

He's so tired. His wounds have healed, his life and freedom granted back to him in whatever limited capacity he has. Francis was self-defense. Hannibal was a plan concocted with the FBI. Will's hands are clean, relatively so, but his stomach feels dirty.

"I wanted to keep him in that moment," he says. "He was perfect, in my eyes. The only way to keep him that way was to make sure he didn't survive another."

Bedelia hums. "So you put your hands over his mouth and nose and let him suffocate."

"No, the water did that." Will shrugs. "I simply let it happen."

 

 

"You left me the cabin in your will."

"Yes. I had no debts, and money enough that it could support those I loved. You, and Abigail, should anything happen to me."

"You're a true provider."

Will hums, his hands shaking as he swallows down more pills. Sleeping aids, this time – they put him under quickly and do not allow him to rise for several hours at a time. "You would have made a great father to her."

"You're still angry."

"You possess a remarkable ability to forgive," he growls, turning his eyes to the shadows in the corner of the room. "An ability I do not share."

"Bitterness will poison you much faster than marijuana or pills, my dear."

Will smiles and lifts a bottle of whiskey in a salute. He's not supposed to mix alcohol with any of his medications. He doesn't care. He just doesn't fucking care.

 

 

"Do you want to die, Will?"

Will tilts his head to one side, rubs his thumb over his nose, and takes a deep breath in. He regards Bedelia coolly. He can still smell blood on his hands, taste it on his tongue. "Yes," he replies. "I should have died with him, on the beach, broken apart by the cliffs."

"You have built yourself an empire."

"And so I weep, for there are no more worlds to conquer."

 

 

He smoked too much this time. His body is heavy, weighted down at the shoulders and neck. The book is almost finished – the fourth in his series, depicting the legend of the Chesapeake Ripper. But it's not right. Not once is his name mentioned.

"Every time I try to finish, my mind betrays me," he murmurs, his fingers curling on the armrests of his chair. They feel so dainty in comparison to the comfortable office chairs he had spent so long sitting within, cradled with leather and love while his brain was flayed and fractured.

Perhaps Will did try to save him. His memory of that night is half-formed, sitting like the stencil of a mosaic as it awaits the pieces of ceramic and stained glass. Maybe he put his hand over his nose to force air into his lungs. Maybe he kissed him, not to swallow his last breath, but to grant him new ones. He doesn't remember. The real memory and what his mind palace has conjured are conflicting lenses, making the whole picture seem out of focus.

"Perhaps it would help to use my name," the shadow says.

Will shakes his head, a growl rumbling in his salt-caked lungs. "No," he replies, and turns to look at the blur of death and destruction that is the man he loves. Or what remains of him. "Your name is mine. And it will die with me."

The shadow smiles. Will can hear it, though he cannot see it. "Your empathy bleeds into the keys. I am there, on the pages of your books as they sell by the hundreds of thousands. People love a redemption story, darling."

"There is no redemption here," Will replies. "Only the story I choose to tell."

"And yet, you do not write the story you want to tell."

"I won't allow my own psychosis to dictate my actions anymore," Will says, baring his teeth. He sits forward and tries to stand. The room spins, haloed in fake light. He goes to the liquor cabinet and pours himself another drink. Cross-fading, that's the word for mixing marijuana with alcohol. It often causes vomiting.

It does not cause hallucinations.

"How long has it been?" Will asks, before he takes his first long drink of whiskey. It's bitter and strong, so unlike the fine wines and food he had become accustomed to with his companion. He thinks of the banquet they might have shared, when all was said and done. Bedelia's thighs the center entrée, Jack's neck seasoned with rosemary and thyme. Alana's tongue and Margot's ribeye steaks, and their lungs cradled by Bedelia's hands. Their livers and kidneys.

Probably not Jack's kidney's. Too cooked.

The shadow hums and Will tilts his head when he stands. The outline is sharpening, growing broad shoulders and fine hands. The hands of a killer. Will swallows, remembering how they'd felt on his face, in his hair. He aches somewhere between his stomach and his heart and takes another drink.

"Three years," he says. Will nods. Such a short, and such a long amount of time as well. He stares into the amber in his glass and imagines his own reflection is a fly there, encased and on display for purveyors of the tortured and trapped.

"And no one has bothered me since," he murmurs. Strange. It's unlike Jack to let his wild dog off the leash for so long. Perhaps he is afraid of what Will might do when provoked.

Will is afraid of what he might do if provoked.

"When did you eat last, Will?"

Will shrugs one shoulder, tips the glass back and empties it onto his dry tongue. He swallows and his throat hurts. "The thought of food repulses me," he says. "Once you've tasted the apple of Eden, you can't simply go back to grass."

"You're wasting away."

"Consumed by my own darkness," Will says with a nod of agreement. "Isn't that what you always wanted?"

"You know that's not true."

Will hums, and then flinches when he feels a hand on his arm. He looks at the shadow-man, eyes wide, and drops the glass. It shatters on the floor and he scrambles back with a snarl.

"Get away from me," he hisses, pushing his chair between himself and the shadow. His arm burns and the touch had felt so _real_. He rubs at it, half-expecting to feel claw marks in the shape of Dolarhyde's nails.

The shadow smiles at him. For a moment, the vision blurs, and Will sees his face. He sucks in a breath and clenches his eyes shut, shakes his head vehemently, and when he opens his eyes again, the shadow is gone.

 

 

He sends his book to his publisher. He doesn't accept any editorial suggestions she makes, and refuses to change any word once it's written. He has never met her, but his books sell, and he imagines she has grown tired of fighting him. Most people do, after a while. His books outpace Freddie Lounds' sensationalist stories and Will wonders if people can tell the difference in what they write.

He doesn't read Freddie's books. They will only make him angry. They might provoke him.

 

 

There's a knock on the door. Will frowns, and stands, waving at the weed smoke as it sits heavy in his study, and goes to the front door.

It's Jack, and Will clenches his jaw and resists the urge to shut the door in his face.

"Agent Crawford," he murmurs. Behind Jack, he sees his large black truck, parked haphazardly in the driveway.

"Will," Jack replies. He looks…good. Startlingly good. Will hates that about him. "It's been a while."

"Yes," Will says. He doesn't open the door any farther. Behind him, a shadow stirs, and he does his best to ignore it when he feels warmth behind him. Jack doesn't react, which means it's in his head. It has always been in his head.

"I need your help," Jack says.

Will growls. "No," he replies sharply. "You borrowed my imagination once, and look where that led. I have washed my hands of all of you."

"I'm afraid, in this instance, your hands will never be clean," Jack says. Will raises his eyes, grits his teeth. "He's back."

Will frowns. "You'll have to be more specific."

Jack presses his lips together, his expression grim, and he shakes his head. "No, I don't."

"That's impossible," Will hisses. "He's dead. I watched him die."

"They never found a body, you know."

"The sea took him." But that's not quite true, is it? Will dragged him up onto the beach, touched his face, swallowed the last breath from his lungs and drank the water from his mouth. He remembers how it felt when his heart beat its last.

Jack has a file in his hands, and he holds it out to Will. "Just look."

…And Will knows he has always been susceptible to gateway drugs.

He takes the file and steps out of the house, closing the door behind him. The air is cold, as crisp and fierce a winter as the one had been when all of this started, when Jack called him into his office and demanded Will be put on his radar.

He opens the file and gasps. Inside are a set of photographs. There are two bodies – a man, standing upright and with his chest carved open, his heart and lungs missing and filled instead with a full fish bowl. There are Betta fish inside, one of them healthy, the other ripped to shreds. At the man's feet kneels a second one, and he has his face upturned and his hands on the first man's stomach, stitched into place so that they cannot separate. The first man is holding the second man's heart, feeding it to him in pieces.

The first man's face has been removed, placed with loving care on the second. The lower half of the kneeling man has been flayed and burned to a crisp, skin black and tainted. "Made in my image," Will whispers, unable to stop the words forming. "I give you my heart and my likeness and watch you rise from the ashes. You are my design."

"It's him, Will," Jack says grimly. "It's Hannibal."

Will whimpers, closing the file. His head feels clouded and hot and there are tears pricking the corners of his eyes. He grits his teeth and wishes he had been asleep when Jack called. "Don't say his name," he says, and shoves the file back into Jack's hands. "If you know who it is, you can find him yourself."

"I think you and I both know where he'll go, Will," Jack replies. His eyes go over Will's shoulder, to the darkness in the cracked door. "Is he here?"

Will smiles, tilts his head to one side, and shrugs his shoulders. "No," he says mildly.

Jack looks him up and down, assessing. Will knows Jack thinks he's lying, but Will won't give anything away. And he is not here. Not really. He lingers like smoke at the foyer of his mind, but Will has not allowed him to go any deeper.

Jack nods. "Please call me if he shows up," he says, and Will smiles again, nodding.

"I certainly will," he replies smoothly, reaching back for the door. "Goodbye, Agent Crawford."

The shadow greets him, reclining in a comfortable chair. He smiles when Will closes the door and Will ignores him, going back into the study towards the liquor cabinet.

"I'm not going after you," he tells the shadow as it steps into place at his side. He takes three more sleeping pills and washes them down with whiskey straight from the bottle. "I'm done chasing you."

"Now, Will, I thought we agreed to never lie to each other."

Will smiles tightly. He sheds his robe and lays it over the back of his work chair, sitting down heavily on the crappy couch he hauled here from his house, before he sold it. He put all his dogs up for adoption, craving the solitude. But he's never allowed to be alone. Not anymore.

"I'm not lying to you," he says, and finishes his glass and sets it down. The shattered one remains, the shards shining in the light coming in from outside. "I can't. You're merely an extension of that part of my brain I can never claw out. I can't drown it, or poison it, or do anything to it." He hums. "Maybe your saw would have fixed the problem."

"I would never want to damage any part of your brain, Will."

Will huffs, closing his eyes. "Just my body."

His head is starting to feel cloudy, and the shadow falls silent as whatever part of his brain that shuts down at the medication is forced under. It feels like wading into the quiet of the stream, and when Will sighs and falls asleep, his gut aches sharply like a new cut has been made.

 

 

He wakes up vomiting, sweating and trembling as he empties the liquid in his stomach onto the floor. The sound of his heaving breaths and soft whimpers are the only ones in the house.

Until they are not.

The shadow never makes a sound when it moves. Which means the footsteps, the shift of weight, the rustle of clothes, are all real. The warm hand on the back of his sweaty neck is real. The glass of water thrust into his hands is real.

He whines and takes the glass, swishes the water in his mouth and spits it onto the puddle, uncaring of the mess, or the smell. He delights in dirtying the cabin, soaking it in the stench of weed and decay. It will crumble as he does, and fall into destitution.

The couch dips by his stomach and Will opens his eyes.

Hannibal smiles at him. His edges are sharp, his face illuminated with such stark clarity, it's like he's sitting on a mortician's table and bathed in fluorescence. Will looks at him, silent, his eyes taking in every detail. The cut on his cheek is healed, his skin is tanned and fine, his hair the same style as it always has been. In the shadows of Will's mind, the image of his wet and dead body is wiped away, replaced with this one.

"No," he whimpers. He shakes his head and rubs at his eyes and tries to will the vision away. But it's not a vision. Hannibal's hand threads through his sweaty hair and it feels like benediction, like forgiveness. Will whines again.

"Hello, Will," he murmurs, and his voice is strong and _alive_ , and Will realizes that the shadow had felt like an echo, pitiful in comparison to the real thing. Such is the strength of Hannibal's designs. "It's good to see you."

"You're dead," Will whispers. "I watched you die."

Hannibal hums. He leans down and rests his forehead on Will's shaking shoulder. His hand tightens and Will moans, covering his face with his hand, setting the water glass down on the floor. He can't help but reach out and put a hand on Hannibal's thigh, as though to test the integrity of his flesh, his warmth and honesty in his presence.

"You left me in hiding," Hannibal murmurs. "I woke in a cave, with you gone, clawed from my side."

"Jack told me they never found your body," Will whispers. He tilts his head into Hannibal's touch, craving it more than he has craved any drug, any sweet release that pills or drugs have given him. His heart beats heavy in his chest and he feels alive.

Perhaps Hannibal wasn't the only one living in the shadows.

Hannibal pulls back so Will can see his face. He cups Will's face with both hands and brings them close, resting their foreheads together. "I have so much to share with you, darling," he whispers. "The years have not been kind to either of us, it seems."

"You seem fine enough," Will replies darkly. It's unfair how Hannibal can look so whole, and Will is so broken apart. He's an addict, a ghost in his own mind, and here Hannibal is, as alive and healthy as ever. Will wants to dig his nails into the bullet hole in his abdomen and tear through his neck. He huffs when Hannibal smiles. "Where have you been?"

"Preparing everything," he says. "I told you, so long ago, that I was making a place for you. That place is finally ready. I want to share it with you. I want you to come with me, and leave all this darkness and chaos behind."

"I wanted to follow you," Will whispers, as quiet and ardent as any confession. He closes his eyes when he feels Hannibal's hands tighten in his hair. His mouth feels full of blood and dirt, saltwater and wine. "I wanted to, but I couldn't."

Hannibal pulls back. There's a tenderness in his eyes, the same vulnerability and love that Will remembers seeing when he'd gutted Will in his kitchen, when they'd killed Francis Dolarhyde on the patio of this very cabin. "And now?"

"Have you been here this whole time?" Will asks. "Has the shadow I've been seeing ever been you?"

Hannibal smiles. He hums and kisses Will's sweaty forehead. "An afterimage," he says against Will's skin. "Nothing more."

"It pales in comparison."

"And yet you are as lovely as I remember," Hannibal replies. "Even in your suffering."

"You delight in my suffering."

"I delight in _you_ , no matter what form you take."

Will smiles. He thinks of Jack, of the two men Hannibal murdered to get his attention. "You have your heart in your hands," he says, and Hannibal nods. "And you still offer it to me. After everything."

"It was always yours," Hannibal replies. "I have no intention of taking back any of my gifts to you."

"And this place is ready. For both of us."

"Yes."

Will presses his lips together and swallows, tasting stomach acid. "I haven't gone fishing in a very long time," he says, and meets Hannibal's eyes. "I'm out of practice."

Hannibal smiles. "Come with me," he says, fiercely, desperately. He takes one hand from Will's hair and cups his face again, resting their foreheads together. Theirs noses touch and Will remembers how Hannibal's lips had felt, cold and wet against his. The salt had been ocean and tears in equal measure. "We will fish and hunt together. That is all I've ever wanted for us, Will."

Will smiles, closes his eyes, and touches Hannibal's cut cheek. He feels Hannibal's hands shake, catches the hitch in his breath, and he nods. "Together," he murmurs, and Hannibal nods and pulls back, allowing Will to stand. He feels shaky, but his head doesn't hurt, and his lungs don't ache.

"I think you will like this place," Hannibal says, and follows Will to the bathroom. Will brushes his teeth and splashes water on his face, feeling more and more human by the second. Such is Hannibal's influence on him. He feels _alive_ , like a dog that has finally heard its master's car come up the driveway. His gut feels eager and hungry. He's _hungry_. "There is sun, and water, and all the fine things I wish to show you."

"Sounds like an Eden," Will murmurs. "Where is it?"

"Havana," Hannibal replies.

Cuba. Interesting. Will smiles. "I've never been anywhere except the U.S.," he says. "And Italy."

"I think you will like it there," Hannibal says. "And if you don't, we can go somewhere else. As long as we're together."

He speaks so openly, so ardently. Will remembers people asking if psychopaths can ever feel something like love. Perhaps not the textbook version of it, but whatever Hannibal feels for Will, Will knows that it is all-consuming, like a chemical addiction in his brain that affects him as harshly as the physicality of it affects Will.

He turns and regards Hannibal, and Hannibal steps close to him. Will puts a hand on him, needing to feel his heartbeat, the steadiness of his rising chest. Hannibal's hand finds his neck, cups it gently, and Will leans in and closes his eyes, breathing shakily.

"Do not remember me as I was when you first saw me," he says. "Remember me like you did in Italy, in the galleria. Remember me as someone who is alive, and who will follow you."

"Do not follow me," Hannibal says, and Will lifts his head. "Walk beside me, as my equal. For that is what you are."

Will smiles. Hannibal's eyes drop to his mouth, then back up, and Will leans in. Their lips meet, chastely at first, but deepening when Will feels the warmth of Hannibal's mouth against his. It wipes away the taste of saltwater and cold flesh. He feels alive, hungry, desperate, and clenches his hand in Hannibal's shirt, pulling him closer. His lips part and Hannibal deepens their kiss, until it burns Will's lungs like suffocation and makes his head feel dizzy, in a good and satisfying way.

It's as intimate as their embrace on the cliffside, before the fall. But Will knows they will not fall. They will fly, rising from the ashes of everything before, conjoined and strong and a beast that will rage over new grounds.

Will's old empire crumbles under Hannibal's touch. New ones will rise. There are finally new worlds to conquer.


End file.
